removing originak paper texture from high res b&w scans

Hello,

A) SHORT FORM QUERY:

How to eliminate paper texture and pencil marks, but maintain the almost black to completely black ink from drawing scans?

B) LONG FORM QUERY:

I have some scans of drawings that I want to print on mildly textured archival quality paper. The problem is that the scans retain the texture from the original paper that the scan comes from. The consequence of this is that when printed on similar paper as the original drawing there is a doubling of textures – the printing paper and the pattern of the paper from the original scan. This leaves an undesirable, and rather fake looking, doubled texture effect in the blank 'white' areas of the images.

An added two-fold complication is that: 1) The ´black´inked areas of the images are not trully uniformly black due to the colour of the ink, erasing, slight errors and the original paper texture. I would, however, prefer that this subtle, uneven inking is maintained, as it preserves the handdrawn look of prints, but; 2) in the scans there is also the appearance of pencil ghosting that is barely visible in the original drawings. I do not want these pencil marks to be visible.
Any simple cutting technique will not do the job as some of the drawings are pointillist, and this cutting would need thousands of repetitions. Additionally, any simple single colour selection technique would not suffice as it is not only pure black, but also dark colours close to black that I need to retain.

So, overall, I basically want to maintain the original ink data, but eliminate the paper texture and the pencil data.

I have been experimenting with a number of different tools, such as the bucket fill plus custom pattern, color select, etc, but I am starting to become overwhelmed with the number of options.

removing originak paper texture from high res b&w scans

How to eliminate paper texture and pencil marks, but maintain the almost black
to completely black ink from drawing scans?

Basically, it sounds like what you want is to make the almost-whites
completely white, while keeping the almost-blacks unchanged. Right?

A great trick for that is the Dodge/Burn tool. Use Dodge mode,
Highlights, with a big brush size big, then brush over your entire
image. Anything that's almost white will get whiter, but dark areas
won't change at all. If you want it even whiter after the first pass,
make a second pass.

removing originak paper texture from high res b&w scans

How to eliminate paper texture and pencil marks, but maintain the almost black
to completely black ink from drawing scans?

B) LONG FORM QUERY:

I have some scans of drawings that I want to print on mildly textured archival
quality paper. The problem is that the scans retain the texture from the
original paper that the scan comes from. The consequence of this is that when
printed on similar paper as the original drawing there is a doubling of textures

I happened to have some scans of art that I am working on myself -
tracing with Inkscape - and when I started playing with the problem of
removing texture I hit on a method that might be worth trying:

1) Open your image in the GIMP, save as XCF with new name.

2) Make a duplicate of your base layer (original image), and set its
mode to Overlay.

3) In the layers dialog, right click the top layer and select "New
layer from visible." Set this new layer to Overlay as well.

4) Look at your results, with attention to the unwanted parts only: If
they are gone (or "gone enough") all is well.

5) Do "New layer from visible" again, leave its mode set to normal.

6) Open the Colors > Curves tool, and pull the curve down as far as you
can, without bringing back any of the unwanted texture, faint markings,
etc. from your original scan. Play with it a bit for best result. You
are looking to make the "keeper" content of your image as dark as
possible without bringing out significant unwanted details.

7) Now the trick: Copy your newest, color curve adjusted layer with
Control+C. Select your original base layer, and add a new white layer
above it. Add a layer mask to this new layer. Left click the mask to
assure it is "current" and do Control-V to paste in your curves adjusted
layer, and left click the arrow icon to merge it down into the layer mask.

8) Turn off visibility of all layers above the white one with mask, and
check the result: Ideally, you should see all the inked parts of your
scan, but none of the paper or fainter markings.

Lots of variations on this technique are possible; I found this one with
a minute or so of tinkering. It works very well on the scan I tested it
out on; your mileage may vary but hopefully not by so much that "one
more tweak" won't provide your desired results.

That one more tweak might include doing "New layer from visible" one
more time, and applying adjustments to that, to alter the appearance of
the inked parts of your scan.